A couple of weeks ago, when Barack Obama expressed a willingness to “refine” his pledge for a firm timeline for withdrawal from Iraq on the basis of advice from “commanders on the ground”, I found myself repeatedly insisting that the people who should be advising our leaders on this matter are not the American “experts” who did so much to ignore Iraqi public opinion and make the country such a horrible mess in the first place, but rather the Iraqis themselves. (I’m aware that this is by no means a novel idea.) I tried at the time to find some solid polling of Iraqi public opinion and unfortunately could not, and hence was a bit taken aback when I encountered a report in the Times quoting a number of Iraqis criticizing Senator Obama and saying that an American withdrawal would be disastrous. I was openly suspicious of the piece, though – not only because a few handpicked interviews clearly do not make for a representative survey, but also because of the MSM’s proud history of carrying water for the U.S. government in matters like this one.
All of which is just a long way of prefacing my thanks to Daniel Larison for this:
The January 2006 World Public Opinion survey of Iraqi opinion [link here - JLS] is now over two years old, which is worth noting since almost three out of four Iraqis supported a timetable for withdrawal of no more than two years then. Even with the intervening nightmarish violence of 2006, it is hard to imagine that public opinion has shifted so much that most Iraqis now want us to stay when two years ago 70% of them wanted us to be gone by now. What is more, 87% supported the Iraqi government endorsing a timeline for withdrawal, and large majorities expected that security would improve in the wake of a withdrawal. Indeed, as the September 2006 survey showed, despite the horrors of the summer of that year (or perhaps because of them), support for withdrawal remained basically unchanged. Someone might object that this is old information, so what do newer surveys show?
One March 2008 survey shows that U.S. forces have the confidence of just 20% of Iraqis, while 72% oppose the presence of U.S. and Coalition forces in Iraq. Opposition to the U.S. presence is higher than it was in 2005, but lower than it was last year, but even in 2005 opposition was at 51%. With respect to the “surge,” 53% of Iraqis still said as of March that the “surge” had made things worse in the areas where the “surge” took place and only 36% believed that it made things better. As a political matter, it seems significant that a majority of Iraqis deemed the new tactical plan a failure despite the moderate improvements that it has actually achieved. 43% said that the “surge” made the conditions for political dialogue worse. That’s a significant change from the 70% who said that the summer before, but most of those who no longer thought the “surge” had made conditions worse simply said that it had no effect. Of course, these figures point to the fundamental, extremely strong opposition to the U.S. presence of about 40% of the population and to the 38% who want U.S. forces to leave now. Just 29% of Iraqis think that a departure of U.S. forces would worsen the security situation. So, yes, you can find Iraqis who will take that view, but they are not representative of most of their countrymen.
Nor, of course, are they in line with the views of their Prime Minister:
Barack Obama should listen well: Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki supports the Democratic Presidential candidate’s plans for withdrawal of American troops within 16 months. “Subject to minor changes, we think that that would be the right period of time for the withdrawal”, he said in an interview with Der Spiegel.
… to prolong the deployment of American troops would, by contrast, be a source of trouble, Maliki said of the plans of Republican candidate John McCain. America should leave the country “as quickly as possible” …
(The article linked there is in German, and the translation given is my own; there is also some more coverage here.) Maliki makes it clear that this is not, of course, an endorsement of Senator Obama, not that that would be a sufficient reason to vote for the man in any case. But the astonishing intransigence of the response from Team McCain, coupled with the splenderrific doubletalk coming from the White House, reminds you why victory for the Democrats really is the best we can reasonably hope for this year. Marc Ambinder and Matt Yglesias have definitely got it right: the Spiegel interview ought to be a game-changer in this election, no doubt about it.
Filed under: foreign affairs, politics, war
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